Dušan Mikolaj
The sculptor Stanislav Meliš has rich theoretical and practical experience with the use of colours in the glass-making craft and industry, and in particular in artistic work. As an apprentice, he began at the glass-making school in Lednické Rovne (Púchov district), followed by four years of study at the School of Applied Art in Nový Bor in northern Bohemia. After completing his secondary studies in 1967, he returned to work in the glassworks, where he acquired basic craft skills, but shortly after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, he decided, like thousands of other young people, to emigrate to Australia. After a complicated start, he arrived in the city of Cairns in north-eastern Australia near the Great Coral Reef which stunned him. He began to reproduce in glass the natural wonders which affected him deeply. By heating up and cooling down the melted materials, using methods of oxidation and reduction, he tried to place a least a fraction of the ocean’s colour in transparent glass – and he succeeded.